


lessons unlearnt

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Slavery, Tevinter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-23 01:20:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2528753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly-robed Magister Cassius learns lessons about slave-keeping... especially the "keeping" part. A slice of high-society Tevene life with a cameo from Danarius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lessons unlearnt

Cassius had just been robed as magister, and already he was sick of court.

The Magisterium was nothing like he’d imagined — the building in which court was held was a vision of blackened spires and echoing halls, of tiled floors gleaming so cleanly that he could watch his reflection as he strode, of elaborate floor-to-ceiling paintings of magisters former and present.  
His painting would be there, in good time. The court artist was currently occupied with another’s.

But despite the suffocating opulence, court itself was drudgery. He propped his throbbing head on his ringed hand and looked around the spacious room with half-lidded eyes, the Archon’s voice droning like a bumblebee’s as he detailed the minutiae of Tevinter politics for their consideration.

"Is this what being a magister is?" he asked Lucrezia, one who’d been robed shortly before him and who seemed to fit her seat with a cold, masterful elegance. "Council meetings and taxes and fiscal-year planning?"

"What did you expect?" Lucrezia smiled mockingly, lifting her hands and wiggling her fingers as if casting a spell. " _Blood magic_ all day long? Whipping slaves for breathing? Fancy dress and fancier balls?”

"Well, I certainly didn’t expect to be _bored_ to death,” he shot back, annoyed, and left her to her contemptuous chuckling.

But when the first auction of his magisterial career came around, he found himself newly invigorated and proud of his ascension. _This_ is what he’d waited for. _This_ was what would colour the days and brighten the nights. His own slaves, his own precious boys moulded to his specifications and whims, _his._

He’d come to Tevinter with nothing. He intended to leave it with everything.

His first pair of boys were swarthy-skinned elves from nearby Seheron, the place of his birth, and he broke them — taking too much glee in punishing them and not giving enough in return. They became blank-eyed automatons, as useful as the giant golems at the entrance to the city, and only marginally prettier.  
He took their blood then, because he’d taken everything else, and in the ecstatic union of their blood and his mana he was blessed with foresight, and he saw what to do.

"You are a crass master," Lucrezia remarked of him once, without malice but without reservation as well. She swirled brandy lazily in a snifter as she watched him pour his own, her legs crossed at the ankle and her free hand fiddling with her russet locks. "You know nothing of the fine arts of slave-owning."

"And you do?" Cassius snorted, bringing the snifter to his nose and breathing in. "I’ve seen you whipping yours. You are merciless."

"And after she was punished, I stroked her back and kissed the marks and I said to her, ‘You are being refined. I do this because I know you can behave better than you have, and because I know you can weather it. You will be better for this, my child.’" She smiled, almost fondly, rubbing her finger over her full bottom lip as she remembered. "And she sobbed, and thanked me, and I let her sleep at the foot of my bed that night, in light, gilt chains, and she arose ready to do my bidding, better than before."

Cassius listened, but because he could not let on that he valued her opinion, he shrugged listlessly and quaffed the brandy.

—

An older magister arose in a furor. One of his prized slaves had disappeared in the night.

"I know the one," Cassius mused, as he and Lucrezia peered over the railing and watched the magister rail and curse in Tevene and Common both. "I thought he loved that one. Treated him exceptionally well, and with great pride."

Lucrezia sucked her teeth and smiled. “But did you see what he did to that one first? He was marked. Scarred. Danarius attempted to break him, because he was wilful, and now he has lost him.”

"But I thought he’d procured him _because_ he was wilful.”

"Exactly."

"Maybe he simply ran because he was sick of being enslaved," Cassius mused, after a moment. But Lucrezia only laughed.

"If that were the case, more would run. That little wolfling ran because risking death and the horrors of the world was better than looking in Danarius’ snivelling, wrinkly face one more day.  
That magister is shamed. He will never recover. He will hunt that one, and will be killed in the process.”

"Why do you know all this?"

Lucrezia smiled her tight, wicked smile again, and left him standing at the railing, while Danarius went mad below.


End file.
